Y.P.R.: Why I'll Never Be Featured at the Cannes Film Festival

Wednesday, July 9, 2003 | Fiction

Why I’ll Never Be Featured at the Cannes Film Festival

by Geoff Wolinetz

Cannes Film Festival Nomination Committee
1000 Charles De Gaulle Way
Cannes, France

13 May, 2003

Dear Mr. Wolinetz,

On behalf of the Cannes Film Festival Nomination Committee, I would like to thank you for your recent submission for the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. We try to honor and respect the film world’s diversity here at our festival and we do appreciate your ambition. We have reviewed your film, Shepherd’s Pi. We must, unfortunately, reject it.

We tried to use the same objectivity with your film that we do with all of the other submissions that we receive. However, over the course of our viewing, we realized that this wouldn’t be possible. To begin with, it appears that your film has been recorded on a videocassette that previously featured an episode of “The Maury Povich Show.” Interspersed throughout your film were clips of episode #407, “I’m Bad and I Don’t Care!”

Furthermore, the film that you have presented makes no sense at all. There are several shots of bleating sheep, mixed with someone that we presume could only be you, reading a math textbook. We were deeply confused with the portion of the film that featured an adult male with his back to the camera facing a brick wall. If the brick wall represents society and the man is urinating all over it, we understand it but we don’t get it. If it isn’t, we are completely lost.

The film’s closing sequence is of particular mystery. The constant and quick cuts from a man furiously masturbating to the man on stage receiving the Nobel Prize for Mathematics is both bizarre and off-putting. Additionally, the “thrilling climax” to which you refer in the letter that accompanied your submission seems to be no more than a woman eating lamb stew.

We’re baffled. This committee has seen an enormous amount of films over the years. Four of our reviewers hold doctorates in Film. Your film not only had them utterly confused, they began to vomit violently after its conclusion. Your vision is disturbed, Mr. Wolinetz. Please do not contact us anymore. Your film will haunt our dreams for the rest of our lives.

Regards,
Jean-Luc Thibideaux

Geoff Wolinetz cannot be found on IMDb because the Hollywood community refuses to acknowledge the production of his seminal masterpiece Come What May, a gritty psychothriller starring a guy who kind of looks like Billy Baldwin and Erin Gray (formerly of "Silver Spoons"). If he were to be found on IMDb, his name would fall between "Geoff Witcher" and "Geoff Wood." In addition to his imaginary film career, Geoff also maintains an imaginary career as a baron of industry, is lead singer of the imaginary band Kick Ass, Falco, holds an imaginary Olympic gold medal and is an imaginary Pulitzer laureate in the field of journalism for his investigative piece on the albinos of Alaska.